Mass Effect 3 Being Adapted For A "Much Larger Market"

Mass Effect 3 has been delayed until 2012 in order to make sure that it's polished to perfection. Hooray!

It's also apparently going to attempt to appeal to a much wider target audience by changing its mechanics! Hoo...wha? Uh oh.

Speaking at an Investors Q&A session earlier today, EA Boss John Riccitiello stated that BioWare will be "adjusting" Mass Effect 3's mechanics to allow it to appeal to a much wider target audience. Considering that BioWare are already under fire for continually "dumbing down" their games, this could be a serious problem.

One of the things that Ray Muzyuka and the team up in Edmonton have done is essentially step-by-step adjust the gameplay mechanics and some of the features that you'll see at E3 to put this in a genre equivalent to shooter-meets-RPG and essentially address a much larger market opportunity than Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2 began to approach.

We're huge believers in the IP and are purposefully shifting it to address a larger market opportunity.

Great, John. That's fine. Just make sure that it still caters for the RPG market and existing Mass Effect fans after its alterations, please. We don't need another third person shooter.

We fervently hope that our paranoia is unjustified, and that the net result will be an action RPG that everyone can enjoy. BioWare have promised more depth and customisation options compared with Mass Effect 2, so with any luck our fears will be completely unfounded. [via EG]

I thought it had been confirmed that multiplayer wasn't happening? Anyway, Mass Effect MP could actually be quite good if they turn it into a Team Fortress-style class-based affair and get the balancing right. But this absolutely must not come at the expense of the SP experience